Country Report Switzerland

Population map by canton

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Which cantons are the more (or less) populated?

Here is a map of Switzerland divided into cantons, showing the total population of each canton in 2018. The canton of Zurich has the most inhabitants (1520968 inhabitants) and the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden the least with only 16145 inhabitants.

Switzerland had a population of 8.57 million in 2019.

Main economic indicators

Analysis of the GDP growth in %

##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
## -7.2832  0.6143  1.8258  1.6789  3.0188  4.6020

As we can see on the graph, the Switzerland GDP growth is sometimes under 0, but the most of the time, it’s higher than 0. To better understand these data, i have choosen to compute the mean (1,68) and the median (1,82) of the GDP growth on the period 1971 - 2018. As we can see on the graphic, there is an important decrease in 1975 due to the first oil crisis.

Comparison with three european countries (France, Italy and Germany)

## # A tibble: 4 x 5
##   country     mean_gdp max_gdp min_gdp median_gdp
##   <chr>          <dbl>   <dbl>   <dbl>      <dbl>
## 1 France          2.19    6.34   -2.87       2.15
## 2 Germany         2.00    5.26   -5.70       1.97
## 3 Italy           1.73    7.13   -5.28       1.71
## 4 Switzerland     1.68    4.60   -7.28       1.83

As we can see, Switzerland doesn’t have the best results in terms of the variation of his GDP. In fact, Switzerland has the worst results compared to this others countries. It’ll be interesting to understand why Switzerland has a better economy than these 3 countries even if the results about the variation of his gdp are less good than his neighbours.

Analysis of the GDP per capita

We can see that the GDP per capita increase during this period, he was at 27594.63 in 1990 and at 68060.94 in 2018 (146,6% increase). It’ll be now interesting to compare with the three others countries to see if Switzerland is better in this category.

Comparison with three european countries (France, Italy and Germany)

Switzerland seems to be far away from his neighbours regarding the gdp per capita. Germany is in the second place with 53074.54 in 2018 (28% less than Switzerland), France in the third place with 45342.40 in 2018 (50% less than Switzerland). The conclusion of this analysis is that Switzerland is better when speaking about economic health into an individual citizens perspective.

Switzerland’s trade

We can see from this graph that Switzerland spends most of its exports to the high-income economies. This means that it offers products with high added value. Nevertheless, this trend has been slightly declining since the early 2000s. This indicates a diversification of Switzerland’s offer and a willingness to reach new markets.

Switzerland imported little from low-income economies until the early 1990s. Since the 1990s, the trend has been upward. This is due to globalisation and also to the need to have access to products and raw materials at low prices. Thus, since 1990, imports from these economies have quadrupled.

Comparison between imports and exports

As said before, we can see that Switzerland imports a bit (19,24%) from low / middle economies in 2017 but this is really increasing since 1990. About the exports, Switzerland exports a lot to high-income economies (75,15%) in 2017 but this is decreasing since 2010. As a conclusion, we can say that Switzerland tend to import more from low / middle economies but also to export more to these economies. However, the most of exports / imports of Switzerland are made with high-income economies but the low / middle economies increase their parts during last decade.

Balance of payments

Switzerland has a positive balance of payments, which means that it exports more than it imports, and this is a sign of good economic health. It is interesting to note that the Swiss balance of payments has remained positive since the 1970s while the other three countries all posted negative balances at some point in the period 1970 - 2020. This demonstrates Switzerland’s trade stability over a long period of time. However, in this graph, Germany has the best balance of payments since 2005. France is the only country with a negative balance of payments in 2020.

Main social indicators

How Switzerland deals with unemployment?

This graph shows the difference between the level of education and the related unemployment rate in Switzerland. Very logically, those with a higher level of education are at an advantage and those with a lower level of education are at a disadvantage. It will now be interesting to compare these unemployment rates with those of three other European countries to see whether Switzerland is doing well in terms of managing unemployment or not.

Comparison with three european countries (France, Italy and Germany)

As we can see from the graph, Switzerland has had a relatively stable unemployment rate since the early 2000s. An increase of about 2.2% in 18 years for those with a high or intermediate level of education and an increase of about 3.8% for those with a low level of education. Only Germany is doing better than Switzerland in terms of unemployment at the end of 2018 for those with a high or intermediate level of education. Nevertheless, the gap remains small, 1.6% for the advanced education category and 1.9% for the intermediate level. Switzerland is doing better than Germany in terms of employability in the low education category, with a 0.7% gap in favour of Switzerland.

In contrast, France and Italy are the worst performers, with unemployment rates for all education categories combined far higher than Germany and Switzerland. For example, the unemployment rate for the low and intermediate education categories is twice as high in France as in Switzerland in 2018. Italy shows similar results to France.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Germany has seen its unemployment rate fall since 2005, Switzerland remains stable, while France and Italy have seen their unemployment rates rise since 2006, although there has been a slight improvement over the last 5 years.

Social progress index

“The Social Progress Index is a new way to define the success of our societies. It is a comprehensive measure of real quality of life, independent of economic indicators. The Social Progress Index is designed to complement, rather than replace, economic measures such as GDP.” (The Social Progress Imperative, 2018)

Switzerland is the country with the highest rate of social progress. This is a very good sign because, in addition to a very high GDP per capita, the social climate is also very positive (although the two are not related). However, the other three countries are also doing very well.

Expenditure on education

As we can see between these four countries, France is the country that spends the most on education in relation to its GDP. Switzerland is in second place. It is interesting to note that France spends more on education but that nevertheless its unemployment rate is much higher than Switzerland (see previous graph). Germany is in third place, very close to Switzerland. Italy is the country that spends the least on education in relation to its GDP in all years. Finally, this graph highlights the fact that Switzerland is the country with the lowest GDP (among the 4 countries compared) but that it is the country with the highest GDP per capita (see previous graph). To conclude, we can deduce that Switzerland’s expenditure on education is certainly lower than France’s, but that graduates will find work more easily and will benefit from higher salaries (although this must be balanced with the Consumer Price Index).

Consumer Price Index

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.

The consumer price index is used to demonstrate the price changes experienced by consumers in a given country. We can see from this graph that Switzerland is the best performer, since its consumer price index is lower than that of the other three countries. Nevertheless, the indices of the other three countries are very close to Switzerland. This means that their price stability is also good.

Foreign population

Switzerland is a country that welcomes many foreigners, especially to work, as is the case for many French people interested in the high salaries offered by this country. Switzerland therefore has a much higher ratio of foreigners than its European neighbours. Moreover, this can be explained by the fact that it is very complicated to be naturalized Swiss. It is, for example, easier in France. Thus, once naturalized, the ratio tends to fall since the person no longer counts as a foreigner. These two factors explain why the ratio for Switzerland is so high.

Intentional homicide

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Risk of poverty or social exclusion

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Corruption Perceptions Index

The indicator is a composite index based on a combination of surveys and assessments of corruption from 13 different sources and scores and ranks countries based on how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be, with a score of 0 representing a very high level of corruption and a score of 100 representing a very clean country.

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Main business indicators

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Conclusion